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news

Vintage Toronto Ads: Just Dial GO

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2008_03_04dial.jpg
Congratulations. You’ve just moved into a home or apartment in the rapidly growing city of North York to start your bright future. You either don’t own a car or prefer to use one as little as possible. Fixed public transit services haven’t quite made it out to your neck of the woods yet you really want to be chauffeured by a bow-tie wearing driver with a creepy smile who will drop you off at your doorstep.
For a brief period in the mid-1970s, GO Transit and the TTC combined to provide a fleet of minibuses to come to your rescue.
GO launched the first Dial-a-Bus pilot in Pickering Township in the summer of 1970, which ran for three years. The service was introduced to Metropolitan Toronto in October 1973, when three zones were launched in partnership with the TTC along either side of York Mills Road between Yonge and Leslie. Accessibility came at a premium compared to bus fares of the time (40 cents versus 30), with no transfers between Dial-a-Bus and regular TTC bus stops.
The experiment barely had time to prove itself. Service expansions to Armour Heights and Downsview lasted less than a year, while the York Mills service fizzled out in 1976. The stereotypical image of a user may have been a problem, as residents complained that only “maids” would provide the bulk of the ridership for proposed permanent TTC routes in the York Mills zones.
Source: The North Toronto Herald, March 22, 1974

Comments

  • David E

    I was once on the Forest Hill bus in the middle of the afternoon and I felt very out of place.
    Everyone on the bus looked like a nanny or cook.
    One person had two children in tow, so she must have been a nanny on an outing with her charges.
    I was the only male. It was a fish-out-of-water
    experience just like in the late ’60s and early ’70s I’d feel like I was the only English-speaking person on a streetcar, bus or subway train.
    How times change.

  • lunarworks

    Sounds quite a lot like Oakville Transit’s “Zone Express” evening and Sunday service.
    The town is divided into four zones, serviced by our buses with no fixed route. You call ahead and tell them where you want to go. They pick you up at the closest bus stop, and drop you off at the closest bus stop to where you’re going, possibly switching buses along the way. Since you call ahead of time, the driver makes up the route as he leaves the GO Station, where its based. (GO Transit riders just get on the bus and say where they want to go without calling ahead.)

  • Rachel Lissner

    Is no one slightly disturbed by the driver’s face?
    Oy vey.

  • greatgefilte

    Looks like the concept is making a comeback, at least theoretically.

  • vancouver

    I remember that old Government of Ontario ads, and road maps, often used to have the name of the minister and deputy minister on them. Seeing that was a nice bit of nostalgia. Sadly, the proper trillium logo has become nostalgia too.

  • Marc Lostracco

    That reminds me of one of my friends saying that Marilyn Churley was the Minister of Elevators—her name and signature were on all the licenses posted in elevators everywhere in the Ontario. We then asked around, and the only thing that people tended to know her from was the quite legible signature in the elevator, even though she has significant lasting accomplishments.
    I miss my Elevator Marilyn these days now that the signature is gone.

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